Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Sea Hawk (1940), The Sea Wolf (1941), Young Man With a Horn (1950), Life With Father (1947), Romance on the High Seas (1948), The Comancheros (1961), Roughly Speaking (1945) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Michael Curtiz movies.
Storyline: Two boyhood friends, Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly have taken different paths in life. After Rocky is arrested he is sent to a juvenile facility and becomes a lifelong tough guy and criminal. Jerry on the other hand goes straight and becomes a Catholic priest ministering to people in the same neighborhood when he and Rocky grew up. When Rocky is released from prison he resumes his criminal lifestyle and becomes much admired by many of the local kids. Worried that the kids will follow Rocky into the criminal world, Jerry works hard to keep them on the straight and narrow. When Rocky is convicted and sentenced to the electric chair, Jerry asks him for one last favor.
Plot Keywords: crime, gangster, drama, classic, 1930s, usa, prison ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) is an adventurous and dashing pirate, who feels that he should pirate the Spanish ships for the good of England. In one such battle, he overtakes a Spanish ship, and when he comes aboard, he finds Doña Maria (Brenda Marshall), a beautiful Spanish royal. He is overwhelmed by her beauty, but she will have nothing to do with him because of his pirating ways (which include taking her prized jewels). To show his noble side, he suprises her by returning the jewels, and she begins to fall for him. When the ship reaches England, Queen Elizabeth I (Dame Flora Robson) is outraged at the actions of Thorpe and demands that he quit pirating. Because he cannot do this, Thorpe is sent on a mission, and in the process, becomes a prisoner of the Spaniards. Meanwhile, Doña Maria pines for Thorpe, and when he escapes, he returns to England to uncover some deadly secrets. Exciting duels follow as Thorpe must expose the evil and win Doña Maria's heart.—Julie Sherman <jsherma@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Plot Keywords: adventure, action, historical, war, romance, drama, swordplay ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: 1900. Each coming into the situation under different circumstances, George Leach, Ruth Brewster, both who are trying to evade capture by the authorities, and writer Humphrey Van Weyden, from a refined background, somewhat reluctantly are on their first of the latest sailing of the Ghost, a sealing schooner, out of its home port of San Francisco. The Ghost is skippered with an iron fist by "Wolf" Larsen, who will not tolerate any question of his authority, and whose cruelty has turned his crew into a hardened lot. In that cruelty, he will often turn his adversaries against each other to his own end of that total control. While all three would like to get off, George and Ruth someplace other than San Francisco, they are being held somewhat captive by Wolf both in not interacting with any other ships and not making land until its ultimate return to San Francisco. Humphrey can see and discovers that Wolf is a mass of contradictions as the Ghost's true nature, which has to do with Wolf's similarly seafaring brother, remains hidden from most. Meanwhile, George does whatever he can to get off board safely with Ruth, especially as they have fallen in love partly in their fugitive status, and even if it requires trying to organize a mutiny under the condition of not knowing who to trust. Through the machinations of each trying to achieve their goal, Wolf may display to who it matters the most his working under the ultimate creed of preferring to "reign in hell than serve in heaven".—Huggo
Plot Keywords: adventure, drama, classic, black and white, adaptation, literary, nautical ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Aimless youth Rick Martin learns he has a gift for music and falls in love with the trumpet. Legendary trumpeter Art Hazzard takes Rick under his wing and teaches him all he knows about playing. To the exclusion of anything else in life, Rick becomes a star trumpeter, but his volatile personality and desire to play jazz rather than the restricted tunes of the bands he works for lands him in trouble.—Jerry Milani <jmilani@ix.netcom.com>
Plot Keywords: musical, drama, biography, jazz, golden age hollywood, film noir, romance ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In late-19th-century New York City, a Wall Street broker likes to think his house runs his way, but finds himself constantly bemused at how much of what happens is down to his wife. His children are also stretching their wings, discovering girls, and making money selling patent medicines. When it comes to light that he has never been baptized and everyone urges him to remedy this, it gets to be too much.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: family, comedy, classic, american, 1940s, black and white, father-son relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Socialite Elvira Kent suspects her husband of fooling around with other women. When he announces he can't join her on their scheduled ocean voyage, she hires a nightclub singer, Georgia Garrett, to pose as her on the cruise. Elvira stays at a hotel near home so she can spy on her husband. She's unaware, however, that her husband has hired a detective, Peter Virgil, to keep an eye on her at sea. Of course, Peter doesn't realize that Georgia is not Mrs. Kent...—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: romance, comedy, musical, song and dance, misunderstanding, 1940s, classic hollywood ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves dealing with the Comanches known as Comancheros.
Plot Keywords: western, texas, 19th century, gunfight, adventure, action, crime ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1902, enterprising Louise Randall is determined to succeed in a man's world. She enrolls at business college but her plans for a career change when she falls in love with handsome Rodney Crane. Although the two have little in common and Rodney disagrees with Louise's views on the woman's role in society, they marry and have four children. Their personality differences eventually lead to a divorce. Louise eventually finds happiness with her second husband, eccentric Harold Pierson.
Plot Keywords: drama, family, biography, inspirational, female lead, american film, black and white ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Adam Lemp, the Dean of the Briarwood Music Foundation, has passed on his love of music to his four early adult daughters - Thea, Emma, Kay and Ann - who live with him and his sister, the girls' Aunt Etta, in the long time family home. Of the four, Kay has the greatest promise as a musical performer, specifically as a singer. Theirs is a loving family, however much the girls exasperate their father with their love of popular music, since he loves only the classics, most specifically Beethoven. The girls support each other however they can, but each is an individual with her own distinct personality and wants, including the type of man each wants as a husband. Practical but deep in her heart romantic Emma has long been courted by their next door neighbor, unassuming florist Ernest Talbot, and clever Thea wants to be Mrs. Ben Crowley, he a wealthy up and coming banker with prospects. Only the youngest, the fun loving Ann, states that she doesn't want to get married. Their collective lives change with the entry into their lives of two men. The first is Adam's old friend's son, popular music composer and conductor Felix Deitz, who easily gets a job at the foundation using his natural and sincere charm which he applies to all equally. Many women misconstrue that charm for romantic interest. The second is Felix's acquaintance, musician Mickey Borden, who he hires to orchestrate his latest composition. Mickey has a chip on his shoulders about what life has dealt him, which he uses in turn as a reason for living a reckless life. The two men make each of the four daughters reexamine what she thinks she wants in life, or more precisely who she wants, which for all may be the same person.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: family drama, musical, classic film, black and white, drama, romance, comedy ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: As French bomber crews prepare an air raid from a base in England, we learn the story of Matrac, a French journalist who opposed the Munich Pact. Framed for murder and sent to Devil's Island, he and four others escape. They are on a ship bound for Marseilles when France surrenders and fascist sympathizer Major Duval tries to seize the ship for Vichy.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: war, drama, history, adventure, action, world war ii, france ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Russian refugee Tanya Borisoff is suddenly abandoned penniless in Rangoon, Burma, by her lover, Tony Evans, who accepted a gunrunning deal from Nick, the owner of an amoral nightclub. Nick made the deal hoping to get Tanya as his main "hostess," which Tanya accepts after an initial refusal, just to make the best of a bad situation. She becomes notorious using the name "Spot White," but her affairs cause the commissioner of police to deport her. She reminds the commissioner of a previous tryst he had with her and extorts 10,000 rupees from him with which to make a new life. She uses a new name, Marjorie Lang, going to Mandalay, Burma, via the Irrawadi River by steamer, where she meets alcoholic Dr. Gregory Burton, who is on his way to help in an area plagued with a deadly contagious fever. As they slowly fall in love, she learns he's doing that to make amends for once operating on a patient while drunk, causing his death. She decides to go with him so they can put their pasts behind them together. But Tony is on the steamer too, and tries to convince Tanya he still loves her. Tony gets a wire from Nick telling him the police are on his trail and will pick him up at the next port, so he leaves evidence to suggest he took poison and jumped overboard, but actually he hides in the hold of the boat. The captain finds the evidence and believes Tanya murdered Tony, but at the urging of Dr. Burton and the first mate who finds the wire, he finally decides it was a suicide and frees her. When Tony returns to an astonished Tanya, he tries to convince her to open a club with him in Mandalay, where she could be a "hostess" again. Through with that life, she eyes the poison still in the cabin as Tony asks her to make him a drink.—Arthur Hausner <genart@volcano.net>
Plot Keywords: adventure, romance, drama, classic, film noir, crime, mystery ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Brian McLean is a ruthless bush-pilot in Canada. He offers some other pilots an opportunity of earning a lot of money, but he marries the girl-friend of one of them. After listening to Churchill's famous "Blood, Sweat and tears" radio address he and some other pilots decide to join the RCAF - and his superior is always the pilot who's girlfriend he has married. Due to this and the fact, that McLean doesn't like to obey he gets troubles.—Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>
Plot Keywords: war, world war ii, canada, patriotism, heroism, adventure, action ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: "Mission to Moscow" was made at the behest of F.D.R. in order to garner more support for the Soviet Union during WWII. It was from the book by Joseph E. Davies, former U.S. Ambassador To Russia. The movie covers the political machinations in Moscow just before the start of the war and presents Stalin's Russia in a very favorable light. So much so, that the movie was cited years later by the House Un-American Activities Commission and was largely responsible for the screenwriter, Howard Koch being Blacklisted.—E. Barry Bruyea <siber@bigfoot.com>
Plot Keywords: war film, world war ii, political, diplomacy, usa, soviet union, documentary style ...
Movie Details Click Here !